The case not posted
by HollyHop
Summary: When Sherlock sees the hound in Dewer's Hollow, he discovers feelings he never experienced before. Which leads him to wonder about these other feelings he has never experienced before and which only surface when John is around. Johnlock.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: This is set during the episode "The Hounds of Baskerville" in series 2 and continuing on from there. It's Johnlock, so be warned.

Disclaimer: I own none of the characters and make no money out of messing about with them. More's the pity. I just enjoy playing with them, like action figures. GI John and his little plastic mates.

**The case not posted**

"_I don't have friends."_

I knew I was going too far, but I couldn't help myself. Once I had gained momentum, I could hardly ever stop. I didn't even hear John's reply to this obvious insult. But then he stood up and made to go. But not before lashing back at me.

"You know, you always pride yourself on having your emotions under control. Well, let me tell you something. You don't. You are the most emotionally unstable person I've ever met. You can't deal with them and so you choose not to bother with learning how to handle them. You just repress everything that goes on in that shrivelled little heart of yours, instead of opening up and learning how to live with your feelings, like the rest of us. Why do you cripple yourself like that? And why do you keep hurting the only people who can actually stand being around you, who … want to be around you? You might want to deduce that for a bit."

And with this parting shot John just left me sitting by the fireside, on my own. He simply strode off outside, most likely to cool down. He had every right to be angry. I don't know what came over me. Well, I do know. I am not only brilliant at analysing others, I can also deduce myself. The hound. I saw it. As big as a bear, fangs as long as fingers and growling, as if just readying itself for an attack. I was afraid. My pulse was racing, my breath caught in my throat and my hands were shaking. Even an hour later, when we were back at the Cross Keys, I still felt the aftermath of seeing the creature boiling in my blood. And John? Well, he hadn't seen it, so of course he would tell me to be rational about it. Idiot. How can I be rational, when something so irrational is making a nest inside my brain?

'_Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound.' _

The words still raced through my mind. A gigantic hound. That is what I was told it would be and that is what I saw. Was I so blinded by my own expectations that I imagined the hound? But I never let myself be run by prejudice or pre-formed opinions. And I hardly ever allow myself to succumb to emotions. So what happened?

I knew I had done John wrong just now, but he was the very epitome of what I despised at that particular moment. He reminded me all too forcefully of my feelings. And I had to push him away. I couldn't let myself be ruled by emotions like that. I might end up accidentally letting him know, letting something slip. And then he would push me away, like all the others had. Now he's angry with me and it hurts, but at least I don't have to worry about him barging into my thoughts anymore tonight with that chirpy, let's-be-rational-about-this manner of his. I can fully concentrate on solving the puzzle of the hound in my mind, without anyone clogging up my brain simply by sitting in the chair opposite.

XXX

I sat by the fire for another hour, going over the events of the early evening again. Henry would, of course, see the hound. He's a nice enough guy but too gullible. What had made me see it, though? Had it been real after all? I had a reasonably good working knowledge of the many different canine races that existed and some of them could grow to the size of a calf, like Mastiffs or Bloodhounds. But what I had seen had been different. Huge, glowing, muscly, like something out of a bad horror movie. Then again it was foggy and we were awkwardly positioned at the base of the hollow, with the creature towering above us. An advantageous position I had often used myself to intimidate others. It sometimes paid off, just to place oneself a step or two higher than one's opponent on a flight of stairs, or to take the higher ground on a sloping lawn.

So if it wasn't real, what was it? Being honest, I have had quite some experience with drugs in the past, but none of them had ever made me see something that wasn't there. I had used them to stimulate me or to calm me down, but never to hallucinate. And besides, how would anyone have been able to introduce a drug into my system without me knowing about it? However, it seemed, until now, the only possible explanation. But how? How was it done? John hadn't seen the dog, so he must have been spared from being slipped the hallucinogenic.

I got up from the chair by the fire and went up to my room. My room. John and I had separate rooms. I had tried to book a double room for us on the sly, intending to pretend later on that nothing else had been available, but all double rooms had already been taken. The Innkeeper had apologised profusely over this and I could tell he was sincere. I had been refused a double room before on account of prejudice. But this time I knew that the landlord would have loved to give us the room, if he could have. I heard it in his voice when I spoke to him on the phone. Not that he had a particularly gay voice, but there was a certain way of phrasing things, a certain pleasure audible when he was talking to me that made me suspect. And when we arrived at the Inn, the possibility became certainty. I never liked to form opinions without sufficient data, but sometimes I played little games with myself of guessing someone's occupation, hobbies or even habits by a quick glance and then trying to find out whether I got it right. Ever since John was with me, of course, he and I had played this little game together. I would tell him someone's occupation or whether he or she was waiting for a date and what they would look like and then John would have to go and find out casually if I was right. I have to admit that I have been caught getting it wrong once or twice, but since no one knew apart from John, I wasn't too bothered. John knows I am fallible, anyway. He knows me better than anyone in the world. But only because I let him. I have never felt so utterly relaxed in someone's presence, so inclined to talk about private things or about nothing at all. Just sitting there in the evenings, thinking our own thoughts and from time to time looking up to make sure the other one was still there. That was all I needed. And I didn't want to disturb this precarious balance in which our friendship was held. That's why John must never suspect.

XXX

I got ready for bed, brushing my teeth in an absent-minded manner and getting into my pyjamas. Usually I would hear John moving about upstairs, creaking floorboards and bedsprings when he lay down. I sometimes caught myself tracing his steps through the room above mine and trying to figure out what he was doing right now. All of this was perfectly safe, because it only served to train my abilities and nothing more. Now, though, John was in another room entirely, or possibly still outside. Walking around in the dark. I promised myself not to fret, because nothing was ever won by fretting. It was a waste of time. If something happened to him, I would know soon enough and if not, I'd see him tomorrow morning at breakfast. I lay down on the bed and tried not to think of John. I tried so hard, I fell asleep with the effort.

When I woke up the next morning, I knew I would have to apologise to him. By now, some things had become clearer in my head and the urgency of last night's events had dissipated. I knew John wouldn't stay mad at me for long. We had fought many times since we'd known each other, but our anger had never lasted, dissolving like mist in the sunshine. When I got down to breakfast, however, he was nowhere to be seen. I decided to get myself a cup of tea first, before I went in search of him. When I spooned the sugar into my cup, I had a revelation. John always took his tea without sugar. Now what if the drug had been in the sugar? This was an interesting option that I would have to expand on later. But first, I had to find John and apologise. Without him around, I always felt dull and slow. He somehow managed to stimulate me. I wanted to do my best when he was around. I wanted to shine. To impress him. He was the one who put me at the top of my game.

'_It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but you are a conductor of light. Some people, without possessing genius, have a remarkable power of stimulating it in others.'_

Well, at least that was what I had meant to say, but it didn't quite come out like that. My first mistake was that I let myself get carried away and touched his arm, something that brought on a quite unexpected headrush, much like a drug itself. Then I confessed to him that I had experienced something the night before that I had never felt. Not a good way to talk around John, because it might lead to me telling him about some other feelings I had never experienced before and that was an inescapable maze, which had to be avoided at all costs. When I had tried to explain and botched it, he turned and walked further down the path towards the gate and out of my reach. That was when I let myself be carried away again. Amazing and brilliant were two of the words I used, I think, and thereby opened a floodgate in my mind that led to me garbling the carefully thought-out sentence, into a much too personal, much too obvious praise. Lucky for me, John thought I was rather overacting and didn't take everything I said at face value.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

A few hours later, I was already convinced that it had been the sugar, which contained the drug that had made Henry and me see the hound. Now all I had to do, was to get John to take some and then observe his hallucinations in a safe and contained environment. This was essential to solving the case and not at all because it turned me on to see John brave dangerous situations in his calm, soldierly way. I don't think I had ever been as impressed by anyone stating his name and rank and ordering minor military officials around, as I had been with John the day before. Ever since I had first laid eyes on him and even more so after he had shot the mass-murdering cabbie to save me from taking the poison, I knew that John contained within his small frame a strength not many people could boast. And yet, he never boasted. None of his actions were designed to impress. He would never try and show off. In this respect we were utterly different.

I had made the necessary arrangements to find out whether it really was the sugar that contained the drug and what reactions it would produce in John. Looking back the experiment was a miscalculation on my part. I should have checked the chemical compound of the sugar first, before I gave it to John, thereby minimising the dangers of him being poisoned or the entire experiment being a useless waste of time. But I was too engrossed in the idea of a rational thinking person seeing something irrational. And I wanted to prove to John that it could happen to him, too. I suppose I wanted to vindicate my behaviour of the previous night. I wanted him to not be mad at me anymore for once more shaking the foundations of our friendship.

I succeeded solely, however, in bringing John to the brink of his senses and scaring him almost out of them. I still feel remorse about this. I suppose, I was so desperate to solve the case that everything else had to take a back seat. In the end it was John, who led me onto the right track again. The hound wasn't an animal, it was a project. And the ever so helpful Mr. Frankland was the crazy lunatic, who would rather risk someone's life than give up on his goal. I was fully aware of the irony.

Back home I tried to make up for what I had done and the next few weeks were spent in a state of utter contentment. Well, except for the fact that my eyes searched John's far too often and my fingers longed to touch his skin. I often caught myself watching him read in his chair by the fire, while I was lying on the couch. Or running my eyes along his slim frame, while he sat at the table writing up on the blog, where he posted our latest exploits, sometimes glorifying me and my abilities and sometimes making me look like a complete and utter git. Yesterday I even went as far as folding our laundry together with John. He had tumbled into the room around noon, with a basket full of clothes and mumbled something about Mrs. Hudson having tendinitis in her right wrist. I didn't ask whether that was due to her folding our washing or whether it just prevented her from doing it now. I smiled a half-smile at John and we started on the socks. It was tedious. But nevertheless it gave me the chance to show John I wasn't entirely useless around the house. Five minutes in I was so bored, I lay back down on the couch and let him finish the task. To be fair, he didn't grumble about it.

"You know," he started, "now that Mrs. Hudson is incapacitated, we could help her around the house a bit. Get her shopping and take out the trash." John shot a sidelong glance at me, while folding a towel in such a precise manner, I had to smirk at the soldier in him. The edges were so sharp, you could have slit someone's throat with it.

"Hm-mh." I tried to sound rather non-committal and busy with thinking, so that I didn't have to be the one to later renege on my promise of doing something around the house for Mrs. Hudson.

"I see what you're doing." John's voice was slightly reproachful. "Don't pretend to be busy with deducing stuff to avoid being roped in to help. We haven't even got a case on at the moment." I closed my eyes, so that John wouldn't see my displeasure at being found out. He knows me far too well. I felt a little stab of anger in my chest. I thought I could fool everyone and I hated it, when John didn't let himself be fooled. I had made him aware of my methods and now he was using them on me to his own ends. I sprang up from the couch and went into my bedroom, slamming the door. Even through the door, I could feel John rolling his eyes at me. A minute later there was a knock on my door.

"Listen, Sherlock … I didn't mean to make fun of you, alright? I just thought we could, y'know, pay Mrs. Hudson back a bit for all the things she does for us. I know it's not your thing, but I kind of enjoyed … us, y'know, folding the washing and stuff."

I grinned at the door. John wasn't usually this ineloquent. I opened the door and he was just standing there in his blue stripy shirt and I had the almost overwhelming urge to take him into my arms. Our eyes burned into each other and we both smiled almost at the same time. I looked down at my pyjamas and the dressing gown I was wearing.

"I'll better get changed then, otherwise the people at the supermarket might be slightly irritated." He nodded, still smiling and turned back into the living room to leave me to put on my suit. I almost reached out my hand to stop him from walking away from me. This wouldn't do. This wouldn't do at all. I had to find some way of solving this brainteaser. How could I find out, if John had any interest in taking our friendship further and how could I show him that I wanted to, without ruining everything in the process. Suppose he wasn't interested and I opened up? That might make living together utterly intolerable. I was at a loss.

When we returned from the supermarket, Mrs. Hudson was very pleased with us and promptly made us a cup of tea in her kitchen. I was just putting the vegetables into the fridge, when I looked over at John, who was watching me. I had never seen him so intent. It was as if he was trying to figure out an especially difficult crossword. Our eyes hung on an invisible thread for a moment, until he looked away, deep in thought. When we got back upstairs half an hour later, John was still very quiet. I knew he was pondering the implications of my gaze and of him reciprocating it, but I didn't think it would take him so long. We had, after all, looked at each other before. I knew that there were many different ways of looking at each other, but I think we had been through all of them. So I gathered that something must have changed for him, to be so affected this time around.

I intended to leave him to his thinking and closed the door to the kitchen, planning on checking up on my experiment that had been sitting on our dinner table for a week now, when the door openend again.

"Y'know, you could just tell me." John was standing in the doorframe, arms akimbo and a look of thunder on his face.

"Tell you what?" I feigned innocence, mainly for the fact that I wasn't entirely certain that we actually were thinking along the same lines right now.

"Oh, don't do that, please." He scoffed. "I'm not stupid. I know you think I am and that's okay, but there are some things in which you are definitely a lot more stupid than I am. And I'm not going to let you turn me into one of your experiments." He pointed a vague hand over at the table full of jars and bags with specimen.

"An experiment?" I was not exactly catching up with what was going on here.

"Yes. What else is this?" Another waving of the hand, but this time pointing back and forth between him and me. His voice grew ever louder, with each sentence he flung at me. "I don't know what you're doing or why, but I'm not going to stand here and let you … play a game with me."

I stared at John, still slightly non-plussed. What kind of a game was I playing? Did he refer to the look we shared earlier? Was he thinking that I was playing a game looking at him?

"John, …" I had no idea where to go with this.

"Listen to me, Sherlock, you know full well I've got feelings for you and I'm not sure what exactly these feelings are, but I'm not a toy and unless …" He stopped and took a deep breath, as if readying himself for a deep sea dive. "Unless you are serious about … me, stop looking at me like you mean it, alright? Just stop it." John's eyes were fixed on the floor at my feet and his breathing was ragged. He had gotten himself quite worked up. Finally I had caught on. I stared at John unable to say anything. Although I had been waiting for this moment, I wasn't prepared for it. After what seemed several minutes, but was probably just a few seconds John finally looked up at me. He was never one to avoid confrontations. Any trouble he had to face, he always wanted to face head on.

I took a step towards him and brought a hand up to touch his face but stopped just short. I felt rather foolish, wanting to remember the exact moment when we irrevocably embarked on a new journey. Not that we would lose what we had, our friendship, trust and understanding, but we would add something that might throw us off kilter, destroy the perfect equilibrium we had been living in. But then again, had it really been so perfect? With me longing for his touch and John, well, I had never been perfectly sure of what he wanted, but there had been signs of him caring more for me than for his own life and I supposed that qualified as love. Sometimes his looks had burned into me and I had thought that, despite his many protestations, his feelings for me were tinged with need. But at other times, he had managed to somehow obscure those feelings and I had gotten the impression that friendship was all I was ever going to get. But now … now he was here, in our kitchen, his face a mere inch away from my fingers, his eyes searching my face for the final proof.

I brought my fingers gently into contact with his cheek and his eyes slid shut for a second, while his mouth fell open slightly. The invitation. My hand now fully cupped his cheek and the tips of my fingers ran past his ear into his hair to apply only the tiniest fraction of pressure. There was really no need for me to guide his head any closer by force. His lips were on mine before I knew it. All I could do was to try and keep up with his want. Our tongues met almost instantly and despite my numbed senses, I could hear him moan very quietly into my mouth. His hands were on my back, pressing me close, pulling at my shirt, grabbing every inch of me he could reach. Holding me, as if I could save him from falling into an abyss. I almost chuckled because holding me ensured his fall, instead of preventing it. Then I felt his hands coming up to my face, cupping it, exploring the shape of it, revelling in the softness of my skin. I dropped my hands from his face and we changed position. Now I was holding him around the waist, cradling him in my arms, with him running his fingers through my hair. My entire being felt as if I was under water. I couldn't hear properly, I couldn't think, my head was filled with this moment only, this kiss, this man. So far my sexual urges had always been controlled by my brain and I had rarely succumbed, but now I felt my whole body trying to grow out of its skin. I tingled. Something I had definitely never done before. John broke the kiss abruptly.

"Sherlock, stop analysing this, please." His eyes were on mine and I focussed back on him, instead of the thoughts racing through my head.

"You're thinking too much. Just enjoy, okay?"

And he gave me another kiss, this time softer, putting all his feelings for me into it. I ran my fingers through his short hair, when he pulled back again looking up at me.

"I know I always said that I … wasn't interested in men … and I'm not! But … I think you may be the one human being in this world that I want to spend my life with, so …" Here he stopped and his eyes seemed to search the room for an end to this sentence, until they focussed back on mine.

"You will." I was absolutely sure of this and I hoped that my statement included the many words I could have said, if I hadn't felt that they would water this conversation down into unimportance.

John gave a short laugh at this.

"Okay. Um, I was hoping for a little more … enthusiasm from you, but I guess that's something I have to get used to." He smiled up at me in that mischievous way of his that I loved so much. I tried to elaborate, complying with his wish.

"I have never been very good at expressing emotions and I've never considered them to be entirely useful. But … you know how I feel. When I first laid eyes on you at St. Barts, I knew that you were special. I knew you could be dangerous for me. Either distracting me from my work or enhancing it. I wasn't sure which it would be. But I had seen something in you, something I had never seen before. A perfect completion of what I was. The weight on the other side of the scale that brought me into balance. And by the end of the next day, I knew that I never wanted to be without you anymore."

I took John's hand in mine and he squeezed it gently, affirmatively. His arms went around my back again and we just stood there in an embrace that might have lasted for hours. My head on his shoulder, his head against my neck. After a minute we returned back to the kissing and the arousal I had felt earlier on, when we had first kissed returned forcefully. Still holding on to my hand John took me upstairs into his bedroom and our new life together.


End file.
